File 3 - Benjamin Ewert sermons

Benjamin Ewert (1870-1958) was born in the area of Thorn, Prussia to Wilhelm Ewert (1829-1887) and Anna Janz. Wilhelm Ewert served as one of the Prussian Mennonite delegates who explored settlement opportunities in North America. The family immigrated to Hillsboro, Kansas in 1874 and took up farming. He graduated from Halstead Seminary in 1890. In 1892 he moved to Gretna, Manitoba where his older brother Heinrich H. Ewert was principal of the new Mennonite Collegiate Institute (MCI). In 1895 he received his teaching certificate, married Emilie A. Ruth ( -1948) of Halstead, Kansas, and was ordained into the ministry by Bishop Johann Funk of the Bergthaler Mennonite Church of Manitoba.

He served the Bergthaler church at Edenburg and taught in the village school for ten years. In 1902 he gave up his teaching position at Edenburg and moved to Gretna where he bought a bookstore and a print shop where he later printed Der Mitarbeiter for the Conference of Mennonites in Canada (CMC) which his brother Heinrich H. Ewert edited. He also taught some classes at the MCI.

In 1902 he represented the Bergthaler Church of Manitoba in negotiations with the Rosenorter Mennonite Church of Saskatchewan when they met in Rosthern, Saskatchewan to discuss the creation of CMC. The following year (1903) he was elected secretary of the first annual sessions of the CMC. He served as secretary for the years 1912 to1916 and chairman from 1941 to1943.

From 1913 to 1917 Ewert served as a member of the Mennonitische Schulkommission (school commission originally organized by the Sommerfeld Mennonite church which later became an inter-Mennonite organization). In 1917 he one of the Mennonite delegates that traveled to Ottawa to discuss conscription and military exemption with the government.

In 1919 Ewert sold the bookstore and printery and became the superintendent of the Gretna seniors home, a position he held until 1921 when he moved to Winnipeg and began serving the Canadian Conference as a itinerant minister (Reiseprediger), travelling across the western and central portions of Canada until 1938. He was also the conference statistician from 1921 to 1951.

When he retired from his extensive travelling he worked in Winnipeg at gathering together the people that formed Bethel Mennonite church. He served this congregation until 1943. During the same period he also served as a member of the executive of the Winnipeg branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society. In 1942 he was appointed as the conference archivist, a post he held until 1956.

Benjamin and Emilie Ewert had four children -- Emma, Amanda, Harold, and Wesley.